Daniel F. Harrington: The strange life of presidential son Robert Todd Lincoln

Tuesday

Apr 15, 2014 at 12:01 AM

Abraham Lincolnís oldest son, Robert Todd, was at his fatherís bedside 149 years ago today when the president died hours after being shot by an assassin in April 1865. He was only 22 but Robert was no...

By Daniel F. Harrington

Abraham Lincolnís oldest son, Robert Todd, was at his fatherís bedside 149 years ago today when the president died hours after being shot by an assassin in April 1865. He was only 22 but Robert was no stranger to death. His brother, Willie, only 7, died of fever at the White House only three years earlier. Robert was at his bedside, too. He undoubtedly thought about his brother Eddie that night as well; Eddie Lincoln was 4 when he died in 1850.

He didnít know it then, but his only surviving sibling, Tad Lincoln, would die of pleurisy in 1871 at age 18. Shortly thereafter, Robert would escort his mother and the nationís former first lady, Mary Todd Lincoln, into an insane asylum. She had had enough. But Robert soldiered on.

You see, coincidence ó and death ó werenít finished with him yet.

On July 2, 1881, Lincoln waltzed into the Sixth Street Station in Washington to board a train headed for Long Branch, N.J. He was running late. Now the nationís secretary of war, Lincoln was to accompany President James Garfield and his sons on their journey to their vacation home. They never got there. Instead, as Robert approached Garfield, an assassin fired two shots into the presidentís back. He would die from infection two months later. As he had with his own father, Lincoln comforted the stricken president as he lay on the floor of the station.

On Sept. 6, 1901, President William McKinley personally invited the still-popular Lincoln to be his guest at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Like many that day, Lincoln was making his way toward the Temple of Music and to the receiving line set up for the president. But an assassin would reach McKinley first. He fired two shots at the president from point-blank range ó McKinley, too, would linger and die from infection, two weeks later. Robert Lincoln was close enough to hear the fatal shots.

Lincoln would forever refuse every other presidential invitation he received. Recognizing the coincidences, Robert responded to one such invitation in a way that echoed his fatherís homespun wisdom: ďNo, I am not going and theyíd better not ask me again because there is a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present.Ē Thus Lincoln, perhaps wisely, yielded to the invisible.

Yet the most astonishing coincidence in Robertís life occurred while his father was still alive.

Toward the end of the Civil War Robert Lincoln found himself at, of all places, a train station in Jersey City, N.J. In a flash of carelessness, he managed to slip off the boarding platform and began to slide beneath the moving train where the cold tracks ó and certain death ó waited below.

Suddenly, he felt a violent jerk on the collar of his shirt as he was thrust up and back onto the platform. Lincoln quickly turned to see the face of his rescuer and recognized the man immediately. It was Edwin Booth, the famous actor, who just happened to be on the platform that day. Edwinís younger brother, John Wilkes Booth, would murder Robertís father, President Lincoln, in about a yearís time. Edwin Booth would find some solace in the fact that his family delivered redemption to the Lincolns before it delivered murder.

Robert Todd Lincoln lived to be 82, and died in his sleep at his home in Vermont in 1926.

There is no moral to this story. It is simply a tale of intrigue highlighted by the visitation of coincidence. And coincidence rarely disappoints. It startles us because it hints at secrets beyond our comprehension and teasingly points to a stage where randomness itself is an illusion.

Perhaps Shakespeare, speaking through Hamlet, said it best: ďThere are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.Ē

I suspect Robert Todd Lincoln would agree.

†

Daniel F. Harrington (danielfharrington@yahoo.com), an occasional contributor, is president of Chartwell Investment Services, in Rumford.